How To Test For Heavy Metals

Assessing your heavy metal status isn’t easy. Questioning and a thorough investigation into your past and present provide some indication of exposure. However, exposure doesn’t indicate how much of those heavy metals stayed in your body. A DNA test gives us another angle of understanding, by assessing your detoxification capacity and thereby assessing how capable your body is of removing these harmful metals. However, we still don’t know for certain whether treatment is required until we directly test for heavy metals. Unfortunately, testing for heavy metals isn’t that simple.

Do you suffer from elevated heavy metals?

We are exposed to heavy metals every day. The air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the cosmetic products we use and the place we sleep at night, all contribute to the toxic burden on our body.

What is a heavy metal?

Simply stated, a metal of relatively high density, or of high atomic weight that causes abnormal or negative disturbance in the body.

The most common heavy metals and ones considered by the World Health Organization to be the biggest risk to the population are cadmium, mercury, lead and arsenic.

When we look at toxins in relation to our body, we often refer to them as toxic burden and toxic load. The “toxic burden” is the amount of toxins we are exposed to everyday. The “toxic load” is the amount of toxins we carry in our body.

The accumulation of these heavy metals in your body can be extremely harmful for the body and can potentially affect the function of every system.

Unfortunately, its not always apparent if you have a toxic build up in the body. Many toxins can be stowed away in the bodies various tissues such as bone, fat, nerves, red blood cells and kidneys. Therefore, it is extremely important to test your heavy metal load and burden to see if these may be contributing to your ill health.

However, testing your heavy metal load or burden isn’t as straightforward as you might think. There are many tests available on the market to check you levels. Some are complete quack, while others have some limitations. The most common tests include the examination of urine, whole blood, serum blood and hair.

So lets explore the positives and negatives of each of these common testing types and thereby provide you with the knowledge to get the right test, at the right time, for the right heavy metal.

Heavy metal tests:

Urine test

This test involves collecting urine and testing the concentration of heavy metal ions.

Pro:

Gives a reasonably accurate indication of recent exposure and long term exposure of a few heavy metals (listed below). Would also indicate if you are still currently exposing yourself to the heavy metal.

Con:

If there has been no recent exposure, it can show up with a very low or negative result, even though there could be elevated levels of heavy metals in your body. This is because some heavy metals are more easily excreted via the kidneys than others. Lead and methyl mercury are bound to protein structures in the body and therefore don’t show up in urine tests.

Thus, only look at the following heavy metals in urine tests:

Cadmium: Urinary cadmium is the best indicator of long-term exposure. Cadmium is concentrated in the kidneys and urinary levels represent cumulative cadmium exposure over the long term

Arsenic: Urinary arsenic is the best indicator of recent exposure, as 80% is excreted in urine after 3 days.

Urinary mercury is the best indicator of inorganic and elemental mercury exposure and kidney burden.

Urine challenge test

This test involves the administration of a chelating agent such as DMPA, DMSA or EDTA prior to collecting urine. The chelating agent can be administered orally or via I.V.

Pro:

The chelating agents mobilize stores of heavy metals in the body and thereby show results that reflect heavy metal stores instead of only recent exposure.

Con:

There are no regulations on how this test is completed; as such there are no high and low reference ranges. As each chelating agents works differently, the dose of chelating agent, the route of administration and the length of time before urine is collected, effects the result. Therefore, as there are no regulations to follow, everyone makes them up and the reference ranges most laboratories supply are similar to a non-challenged urine test. Therefore, almost everyone has elevated results but we have no reliable way to know if this is a sign of toxicity or normal daily excretion. Finally, taking high levels of chelating agents can be very damaging to your health as they can draw out essential minerals or mobilize toxic heavy metals.

Whole blood test

This test examines the heavy metal concentrations inside your red and white blood cells, but does not check the heavy metal levels in the fluid surrounding the cells (plasma).

Pro:

As blood cells live up to 120 days the level of heavy metal found reflects your exposure/blood levels over the last 120 days.

Con:

Not all heavy metals have an affinity to bind with red blood cells. Some heavy metals prefer to adhere to tissues in the kidneys or bone structures throughout the body. Therefore, those that do not have a high affinity with red blood cells will only be elevated if there has been very recent exposure or the body is extremely toxic.

The heavy metals that do have an affinity with red blood cells are:

Lead: Whole blood is the best indicator of lead status. Around 95% of lead is bound to red blood cells, while the rest binds to bone and other protein structures.

Mercury: Whole blood is the best indicator of organic (methyl or ethyl) mercury exposure with 70-95% bound to hemoglobin in red blood cells. Blood is however not a good indicator of inorganic or elemental mercury levels.

Blood Plasma Test

Pro:

The main reason to conduct this test is if liver or kidney damage is present, as urinary excretion will not be accurate or give false readings. In this case, plasma testing can replace this. However, It will only show recent exposure or severe toxicity.

Con:

Blood plasma testing will not show stores in the body or long-term exposure unless every other tissue is over saturated and toxicity levels are very high. Most heavy metals are bound to another molecule and either stick around in the body or are quickly excreted via the urine.

Hair mineral test

This test examines the heavy metal content of newly grown hair.

Pro:

This test shows a long-term picture of plasma concentrations of heavy metals. It can also indicate some protein bound stores that are used in the hair’s growth.

Con:

Not all heavy metals are mobilized in the growth of a hair follicle, therefore generally only plasma concentrations influence the heavy metal levels. There is also a large risk of contamination with hair testing as hair dyes, shampoos, conditioners and other products can contain heavy metals thereby providing false results.

The solution

As you may have noticed there are no perfect tests. Each and every one of the tests discussed, have some pretty significant drawbacks. However don’t despair, as there is at least some light at the end of the tunnel.

Introducing the Mercury Tri-Test

Quicksilver scientific utilizes a combination of 3 tests to examine mercury as well as tests for all other heavy metals in whole blood. The Tri test for mercury looks at samples of hair, whole blood and urine to assess for the body’s mercury burden and its ability to eliminate it. By combing the results of all three markers, we are bypassing the limitations of each test and thereby get a much more thorough and complete picture of your Mercury levels. The Blood metals give us a further snapshot of other metal burdens. Although there are limitations to testing all other heavy metals in your blood it is a great starting point.

Quicksilver scientific currently hold the patent for the mercury tri-test and all third party providers send their test samples to Quicksilver Scientific in the USA for testing. Certain states in the USA are able to order this test directly, everyone else must order through an accredited practitioner.

Therefore I am offering a Truly Heal Cause evaluation and test interpretations at a discounted rate for anyone interested in this test.

The Future and Today

The Mercury Tri test is a prime example of the future of heavy metal testing. Hopefully very soon, more test like this one will become available where the combination of urine, whole blood and possibly even hair is used to give us a thorough understanding of what’s actually going on. As time goes on we can also hope that challenging urine tests, which was once considered a gold standard, are put under the microscope and proper guidelines with corresponding reference ranges are established so we are able to properly utilize this test.

Until that time comes, we will use the tri test for mercury, urine for cadmium and arsenic and whole blood for lead and cadmium. By combing these 3 testing methods we have reliable way to understand the 4 major heavy metals that affect our system.

If you think heavy metal toxicity may be a factor in your declining health, order a Truly Heal Cause & TOX Evaluation or seek out an informed practitioner to help you investigate your symptoms, navigate these tests and instigate an appropriate detoxification plan.

About the Author

Benedict Freudenmann is a passionate and intellectually minded individual, whose drive to health and knowledge makes him an inspiring practitioner. Benedict’s education in the world of Natural Medicine began in 2006 he travelled filming the documentary ‘Cancer is Curable Now’ (now known as ‘Truly Heal from Cancer’). In 2014 Benedict graduated with a Bachelor of Health Science in Nutritional Medicine. Since that time, Benedict has co-authored the ‘Truly Heal’ functional medicine workbook and online health coaching program and co-founded the Truly Heal Functional Medicine Practitioner App.
In 2015, Benedict worked as a Clinical Nutritionist at the Arcadia Praxis, an alternative cancer clinic based in Bad Emstal Germany. Currently Benedict Practices in Hobart Tasmania while also seeing patient from around the globe via the Truly Heal Cause Evaluations and Treatment Recommendations.
Benedict's methodology to treatment is fundamentally based around; understanding, finding and resolving the underlying causation of all chronic diseases. Utilising both functional medicine and the truly heal philosophy Benedict focuses on removing the 5 major drivers of disease; Toxicity, Infection, Inflammation, Acidity, Deficiencies and Psychological. Benedict’s treatments incorporate dietary/lifestyle interventions as well as research based supplementation and alternative therapies.

My name is Bommi V Reddy I am a DVM MD and ND. Soon I am going to start Naturopathic and integrative medicine in people and pets. I have been practicing veterinary medicine and surgery for 39 years. I am delighted to hear about your passion in natural health and the modalities you do. I d like to correspond with you and learn more

Hi Benedict , great article thank you.
I’m just wondering though why no mention is made of the Oligoscanner that Truly Heal have been using for the last few years as a better measure than hair mineral and heavy metal toxicity analysis?

Hi Clarice. Great observation. We did like the OligoScanner device and believed it had great promise when we initially found it. However although we love the science it was based on, there was no testing to legitimise the results they showed. The company was also unable to provide us any further information when requested and although they mentioned that they were conducting clinical trials never got back to us about them. This began our questioning of how legitimate the results were. After testing clients from all around the world and all works of life we notices that there were significant patterns in all the results. The most noticeable was aluminium and silver toxicity. Although we aren’t ruling out that the oligoscan could have accurate results. Until we see third party investigations into the validity of the results we cannot continue to advise/promote this product. Furthermore we would like to see an investigation in the reference ranges used in the scan and how these were established.

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